Kahran's Paradise

With all this hot sunny weather in the UK, you might be wondering about how the plants are responding to these conditions. Join me, Dr. Katia Hougaard, as we explore the connection between purple coloration in Persian Basil (Ocimum basilicum) and exposure to sunlight.

While plants need sunlight in order to perform photosynthesis, plants can get "too much of a good thing" when they are exposed to excessive UV radiation from the sun. In response, plants make red and blue coloured pigments called anthocyanins to protect themselves from DNA damage. These pigments serve as anti-oxidants that protect against oxidative stress caused by free radicals created via UV exposure. Anthocyanins can have a similar anti oxidant function in the human body when a person eats red and purple fruits, vegetables, and herbs as part of a healthy diet.

Stay curious about plants today, and every day!

Moon Joy June may be over, but Moon Joy never dies! NASA’s Artemis missions represent the future of space exploration. We choose to go to the Moon to inspire a new generation of explorers, to prepare for the first crewed missions to Mars, and to make discoveries for the benefit of all. Thank you for sharing your Moon Joy with us — we feel it, too. If you are interested in feeling even more Moon Joy, check out International Observe the Moon Night coming up on Sept. 19, 2026. You can join a community, attend an event, and meet up with other lunar observers. 

Sure, but I think we know how this is going to go.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (both versions) contains a "greed trap" for players who have discovered the cooking properties of a Point Swap item and attempt to use them to enrich themselves.

When cooked with many other items, a Point Swap results in the item turning into a different yet similar one in a reversible manner. For example, an Ultra Mushroom (restores 50 HP) cookied with a Point Swap will turn into a Jammin' Jelly (restores 50 FP), while cooking the Jammin' Jelly with a Point Swap again turns it back into an Ultra Mushroom. There are 11 such item pairs that will turn into each other when cooked in this manner.

Players may attempt to cook an expensive Gold Bar x3 item with a Point Swap to see if it can turn into something equally valuable; it instead turns into a Gold Bar, a lesser version of the same item. The player may then believe that the process is reversible and try to cook the Gold Bar again to get a Gold Bar x3 (which would be very profitable if it worked), only to find out that the Gold Bar will now turn into a Mushroom, which is nearly worthless compared to the Gold Bar. The player's belief that profit can be made by cooking gold with the Point Swap results in all of the money being lost.

Source: PM:TTYD (NA, GC)

In Paper Mario: The Origami King, a plot event in Shangri-Spa is Bowser Jr.'s colors disappearing after taking a bath in the Spring of Jungle Mist. When he emerges from the spring, Kamek says a blank text bubble, whereupon he humorously explains that the shock made the color drain from his typeface.

However, while the speech bubble appears blank, it actually has text in it, which is merely set to 0% transparency - "You're bleached!". As such, it cannot actually be seen in-game under any circumstances, and requires extracting the data from the game's files to view. Interestingly, this text has been translated into all languages the game is available in, and cannot be seen in any of them. The table provides the text and a rough translation of all the language versions.

Source: Scrooge200

In Super Mario World, many glitches exist that allow Yoshi to eat unintended objects, some of which end up placing unintended items into the item reserve box. One very commonly used application of this is placing a Magic Ball into the reserve box, which normally appears only in the Sunken Ghost Ship and instantly wins the level if touched.

If the Magic Ball is released from the reserve box inside a bonus game and collected, the bonus game will be "completed" in the same way a level would be, instead of being "won" the regular way. This is, of course, not intended and will cause the bonus game room to reload, except without the blocks that comprise the actual bonus game in it. Mario will be trapped in the empty room forever until the game is reset.

Note that -the pipe in the upper left is an exit-only pipe and cannot be entered -there is no timer so Mario cannot die from the time running out -pressing Start + Select does not work so none of the potential ways of leaving the room are actually possible.

Source: Wingcapman